You've Got To Watch This!

It has been a while since my last blog post. I have been busy for the past few months. Anyway, I thought I would resume. And I thought the best way to resume is to post something very cool, interesting and totally unexpected.

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Zoe's First Dance Recital

What: Zoe's First Dance Recital
When: June 13, 2009
Where: North Brunswick Township High School Auditorium

Hammarskjold Middle School Orchestra Concert

The Hammarskjold Middle School Orchestra, of which my son Zahir is a member, had their concert last 06-02-2009. Here are two of the 6 songs they played.

Schwanda the Bagpiper by Weinberger




1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky

The Most Moving Dance You'll Ever See!

The ballet pair of Ma Li and Zhai Xiaowei, she without an arm and he without a leg, is one of the most moving dances ever. See them in their dance entitled "Hand and Hand".

This Has Got To Be The Best Dance Moves Ever!

Taiwan's New Solar Stadium - Amazing

From Inhabitat: Taiwan’s Solar Stadium is 100% Powered by the Sun by Diane Pham

Taiwan recently finished construction on an incredible solar-powered stadium that will generate 100% of its electricity from photovoltaic technology! Designed by Toyo Ito, the dragon-shaped 50,000 seat arena is clad in 8,844 solar panels that illuminate the track and field with 3,300 lux. The project will officially open later this year to welcome the 2009 World Games.

Building a new stadium is always a massive undertaking that requires millions of dollars, substantial physical labor, and a vast amount of electricity to keep it operating. Toyo Ito’s design negates this energy drain with a stunning 14,155 sq meter solar roof that is able to provide enough energy to power the stadium’s 3,300 lights and two jumbo vision screens. To illustrate the incredible power of this system, officials ran a test this January and found that it took just six minutes to power up the stadium’s entire lighting system!






Read more here.

Harry, Louise and Barack

One of my favorite columnists and economists, Paul Krugman, has an interesting NY Times op-ed piece about Health Care Reform.

From the NY Times: Harry, Louise and Barack by Paul Krugman

Harry and Louise were the fictional couple who appeared in advertisements run by the insurance industry in 1993, fretting about what would happen if “government bureaucrats” started making health care decisions. The ads helped kill the Clinton health care plan, and have stood, ever since, as a symbol of the ability of powerful special interests to block health care reform.

But on Saturday, excited administration officials called me to say that this time the medical-industrial complex (their term, not mine) is offering to be helpful.

Six major industry players — including America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a descendant of the lobbying group that spawned Harry and Louise — have sent a letter to President Obama sketching out a plan to control health care costs. What’s more, the letter implicitly endorses much of what administration officials have been saying about health economics.

Are there reasons to be suspicious about this gift? You bet — and I’ll get to that in a bit. But first things first: on the face of it, this is tremendously good news.

The signatories of the letter say that they’re developing proposals to help the administration achieve its goal of shaving 1.5 percentage points off the growth rate of health care spending. That may not sound like much, but it’s actually huge: achieving that goal would save $2 trillion over the next decade.

Continue reading...

Sunday Classical Music: Lalo Symphonie Espagnole, Op. 21, 1st Movement

Although Edouard Lalo is not one of the most immediately recognized names in French music, his distinctive style has earned him some degree of popularity. Symphonie Espagnole for Violin and Orchestra still enjoys a prominent place in violinists' repertoire, and is known in many classical circles simply as "The Lalo".

Violin: Vadim Repin
Conductor: David Robertson
Orchestra: Orchestre National de Lyon

Republicans: The Indulgent Parents

A very compelling essay about the rise and imminent demise of the Republican Party. If you follow American politics, this is a must-read.

From Dailykos: By Dana Houle

You've seen them. Maybe it's a friend or a sibling. Someone you see out in public. Maybe, even, you've pondered the past and recognize it might have been your parents, or maybe even you: indulgent parents. Parents who never set limits, never enforce boundaries. Parents who never tell their children no. And you know what happens. Their kids usually grow up to be monsters, or face a tough transition to adulthood, because they think everything should be handed to them on a silver platter. They can't understand why the world doesn't roll over for them the way their parents did. They often become embittered and disillusioned, and sometimes even nihilistic. And their parents often experience shame and regret, and feel like they've become hostage to the monsters they helped create.

In American politics, the spoiled children struggling to deal with a reality they don't like and didn't expect are those voters who make up the rightwing of the Republican base. The indulgent parents of American politics are the leaders, elected officials and apparatchiks of the Republican party.

It wasn't always so. The Republican party wasn't always hostile to progress, tolerance and good governance. After WWII, it still contained some retrograde elements who wanted to go back to 1928 and wipe out an expansive role for the federal government. But most top Republicans at least tried to live in reality and be responsible about governance. That began to change, however, after their landslide loss in 1964. The Goldwater insurgency marked the beginning of a long-term takeover of the GOP by the rightwing ultras who viewed the world through an unyielding ideological prism.

Continue reading here.

Rachel Maddow: Disambiguation of Torture

The Beauty that Matters is Always on the Inside

Perhaps, you have already heard about Susan Boyle's story. If you haven't, you should watch this video. Then, read the very nice and inspiring article about her below.

From the Herald: The Beauty that Matters is Always on the Inside by Collette Douglas Home

Susan Boyle's story is a parable of our age. She is a singer of enormous talent, who cared for her widowed mother until she died two years ago. Susan's is a combination of ability and virtue that deserves congratulation.

So how come she was treated as a laughing stock when she walked on stage for the opening heat of Britain's Got Talent 2009 on Saturday night?

The moment the reality show's audience and judging panel saw the small, shy, middle-aged woman, they started to smirk. When she said she wanted a professional singing career to equal that of Elaine Paige, the camera showed audience members rolling their eyes in disbelief. They scoffed when she told Simon Cowell, one of the judges, how she'd reached her forties without managing to develop a singing career because she hadn't had the opportunity. Another judge, Piers Morgan, later wrote on his blog that, just before she launched into I Dreamed a Dream, the 3000-strong audience in Glasgow was laughing and the three judges were suppressing chuckles.

It was rude and cruel and arrogant. Susan Boyle from Blackburn, West Lothian, was presumed to be a buffoon. But why?

Read the entire article here.

Trip to Crayola Factory

Last Friday, Diana and I brought Zoe to the Crayola Factory in Easton, Pennsylvania. Zahir also came along with us.

Future of U.S. Depends on Torture Accountability

From MSNBC: Special Comment by Keith Olbermann

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Read Full Transcript here.

Top Ten Enemies of the Single Payer Health Insurance System

From CommonDreams.Org: Top Ten Enemies of Single Payer by Russell Mokhiber

Most people, when they arrive in Washington, D.C., see it for what it is - a cesspool of corruption.

Two reasonable reactions to the cesspool.

One, run away screaming in fear.

Two, stay and fight back and bring to justice those who have corrupted our democracy.

Unfortunately, many choose a third way - stay and be transformed.

Instead of seeing a cesspool, they begin seeing a hot tub.

The result - profits and wealth for the corporate elite - death, disease and destruction for the American people.

Nowhere does this corrupt, calculating transformation do more damage than in the area of health care.

Outside the beltway cesspool/hot tub, the majority of doctors, nurses, small businesses, health economists, and the majority of the American people - according to recent polls - want a Canadian-style, single payer, everybody in, nobody out, free choice of doctor and hospital, national health insurance system.

Inside the beltway cesspool/hot tub, the corrupt elite will have none of it.

They won't even put single payer on the table for discussion.

Why not?

Because it will bring a harsh justice - the death penalty - to their buddies in the multi-billion dollar private health insurance industry.

The will of the American people is being held up by a handful of organizations and individuals who profit off the suffering of the masses.

And the will of the American people will not be done until this criminal elite is confronted and defeated.

(Remember, virtually the entire industrialized world - save for us, the U.S. - makes it a crime to allow for-profit health insurance corporations to make money selling basic health insurance.)

Before we confront and defeat the inside the beltway cesspool/hot tub crowd, we must first know who they are.

Read more.

Noam Chomsky on Healthcare

Noam Chomsky is one of my favorite modern american philosophers. He is a political activist, prolific writer and lecturer. He is currently a Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In the video below, which was taken on April 7, 2009 at the Orpheum Theater in Madison, Wisconsin, he spoke to a full-capacity crowd about why the Health Care Reform in the United States has taken so long.



To know more about Noam Chomsky, click here.

This Week in Science: Bonnie Bassler: Discovering Bacteria's Amazing Communication System

Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria "talk" to each other, using a chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks. The find has stunning implications for medicine, industry -- and our understanding of ourselves.



About Bonnie Bassler: In 2002, bearing her microscope on a microbe that lives in the gut of fish, Bonnie Bassler isolated an elusive molecule called AI-2, and uncovered the mechanism behind mysterious behavior called quorum sensing -- or bacterial communication. She showed that bacterial chatter is hardly exceptional or anomolous behavior, as was once thought -- and in fact, most bacteria do it, and most do it all the time. (She calls the signaling molecules "bacterial Esperanto.")

The discovery shows how cell populations use chemical powwows to stage attacks, evade immune systems and forge slimy defenses called biofilms. For that, she's won a MacArthur "genius" grant -- and is giving new hope to frustrated pharmacos seeking new weapons against drug-resistant superbugs.

Bassler teaches molecular biology at Princeton, where she continues her years-long study of V. harveyi, one such social microbe that is mainly responsible for glow-in-the-dark sushi. She also teaches aerobics at the YMCA.

I wish I still have my old ukelele

When I was about 7 or 8 years old, my father bought me a ukelele as a birthday gift. (For those of you who don't know what a ukelele is: it is a small, four-stringed version of a guitar, which is about the size of a regular violin. It has long been associated with Hawaii. The word "ukelele" means "jumping flea" in English). I was so excited to learn how to play it. My father, who was a very good ukelele player himself, patiently taught me the basics. I used to practice playing the instrument for at least an hour or two each day after school and during weekends. I actually became very good at it. I had two ukeleles. I accidentally dropped my old one, so we bought a new one. I played the ukelele until I was 12, then I moved on to the regular guitar.

I was browsing Youtube videos last night, and chanced upon a very nice and soothing ukelele performance by ukelele legend Herb Ohta and his son Iwao. As I watch the video, I missed my old ukelele, and I wish I still have it.

I think I am probably going to end up buying a new ukelele - the musical instrument of my youth; reminisce the days when my father was still alive and the many happy days we've spent together as father and son with the ukelele.

Here are some ukelele music by ukelele legend Herb Ohta. Enjoy!

From the Washington Post:

NEW YORK, April 7 -- Vermont on Tuesday became the fourth state to recognize gay marriage, and the D.C. Council voted to recognize same-sex unions performed in other states. The two actions give same-sex marriage proponents new momentum, following a similar victory last week in Iowa's Supreme Court.

"I think we're going to look back at this week as a moment when our entire country turned a corner," said Jennifer C. Pizer, the national marriage project director for the advocacy group Lambda Legal. "Each time there's an important step forward, it makes it easier for others to follow."

The action Tuesday in Vermont came swiftly, surprising even some of the proponents of gay marriage who were still celebrating their victory last Friday, when the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriages could go ahead.

The two houses of Vermont's legislature voted last week for a same-sex marriage bill -- four votes short of a veto-overriding majority -- and Gov. Jim Douglas (R) vetoed it Monday. But Tuesday, several house members who voted against it last week switched sides to support the override, making gay marriage law.

The final vote was 100 to 49 to override the governor's veto. The initial vote last week was 94 to 52. Vermont has no mechanism for a citizen referendum to override the law.

"All of us are thrilled at the pace," said Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of the Massachusetts-based Family Equality Council, which advocates for gay rights. "This is a great day."

Read more here.

Iowa Supreme Court Legalizes Gay Marriage

From MSNBC:

DES MOINES, Iowa, April 3 - The Iowa Supreme Court legalized gay marriage Friday in a unanimous and emphatic decision that makes Iowa the third state — and first in the nation's heartland — to allow same-sex couples to wed.

Iowa joins only Massachusetts and Connecticut in permitting same-sex marriage. For six months last year, California's high court allowed gay marriage before voters banned it in November.

The Iowa justices upheld a lower-court ruling that rejected a state law restricting marriage to a union between a man and woman.

Read more here.

Sunday Classical Music: Brahms Double Concerto in A Minor Op 102, Vivace Non Troppo (3rd Movement)

Nothing can beat the excitement, thrill, energy, drama and romance from this Brahms classical piece. It may not be as well-known as the other Brahms concertos, but when it is played by two excellent musicians accompanied by a good orchestra and an excellent conductor, it attains the greatness of the more popular Brahms concertos.

Violin: Julia Fischer
Cello: Daniel Müller-Schott
Conductor: Christoph Poppen
Orchestra: Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken